


Onion Skin

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Parenthood, Poverty, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:46:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gendry and Davos, many years later by the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Onion Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainfallen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainfallen/gifts).



Onion skin was always pale and translucent and ascendant from the earth. As his old friend lay dying the comparison felt a better fit than it had before. The shared memory of the lone pearly onion in bowls of brown slid between them again, and with it fractured childhood narratives that became a strange whole when they were together.

The salt air settled over them and the fog began to curl in so that the room became a haze. He always had the window open because he said he needed to feel and taste the sea. Gendry knew how that felt, because he always insisted on being near a fire and the denseness of the flames. In the North he sought out the heat wherever he could, but nothing came close to the grubby choke of Kings’ Landing in summer where the heat would roll out in waves and make everything seem to shake.

But in the forge he could feel the old blisters return and it made him smile. Everyone knew not to disturb him then, when his eyes took on the strange intelligence of the craftsman.

On the day before his last one they hobbled out to the sea and sat eating salt fish and bread and butter. Davos’ voice sounded like crinkled paper and his hands had the ever present texture of translucent onion skin. Gendry picked up pebbles and enjoyed their weight in his palm and the strange colours that caught in the dim winter sun. He thought of his sons and how they would marvel at their shape and imagine them to be jewels from a perfumed land.

Davos told him how he would take his sons out and skim rocks on the ocean, how their eyes grew wide and breaths stilled as the pebble skipped along the water. Their ghosts hung between them, these two strange men (to Davos, though, Gendry would always be a boy), and Gendry felt the familiar sense of shame at having taken their place. Always he felt the fear of being unwanted, but then Davos would squeeze his wrist and smile tightly and Gendry felt something settle within him.

The day it ended his eyes seemed brighter than usual. A calm settled throughout the house and the cold chilled the skin. Marya brought them both extra blankets and watered down beer and they sat and told old, well-worn jokes for a while. Marya would hold Gendry later in her arms with a supple strength Gendry could only associate with women and it was he who cried.

For the first time in many years Gendry uttered a prayer to the Mother and the Stranger for a gentle death. The words seemed flat and distant and as he spoke them he felt himself a boy again, lost.

Davos closed his eyes and to Gendry he seemed to smile. Marya lit a tallow candle beside him that seemed to warm Davos’ skin, make him anew.

Gendry held the old man’s hand and prayed to all the Gods he knew. That night he dreamt of bowls of brown and the feel of them as they dried all sticky on your lips.

The day after Marya gave him a dry kiss on the cheek and some bread and cheese for the road, uttering no goodbye. Gendry set off towards the harbour, the weight of the pebbles hanging deep in his pocket.

 


End file.
